Disarmament

In a high-profile speech today in Berlin, President Obama announced his plan to “seek negotiated cuts with Russia” in order to reduce America’s “deployed strategic nuclear weapons by up to one-third.” The prudence of Obama’s plan, however, remains far from certain due to many stubborn problems.

President Obama’s plan to further cut the U.S. nuclear arsenal comes at a dangerous time. The President sees his plan as the next step in someday achieving his dream of a “world without nuclear weapons.” But the world has a vote, too, and even if Russia is open to further nuclear cuts—something which remains unclear at this point—other nations do not appear to share Obama’s aspiration.

In the Asia-Pacific, both China and North Korea are modernizing and expanding their nuclear arsenals. In turn, that’s making Japan and South Korea—technologically-capable U.S. allies who have eschewed building their own atomic arsenals thanks, in no small part, to the preponderant strength of America’s nuclear deterrent—increasingly nervous.

While the U.S. intelligence community periodically estimates the size of China’s nuclear forces, House lawmakers want the President to certify that the intelligence community has “high confidence” in these estimates before the United States proceeds with further nuclear cuts. The worry is that if the size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal keeps dropping, it is conceivable that China someday could rapidly build up its nuclear forces in an attempt to reach game-changing numerical parity with the United States. That’s why it’s long past due for Washington to stop thinking about any future limitations to nuclear arms in bilateral terms with Russia, and start thinking—at the very least—in trilateral terms with Russia and China.

Will the increasingly liberal views of the National Association of Evangelicals affect the next election?

The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) on November 8 released a new policy that falls just short of urging total nuclear disarmament while surmising that reliance on nukes might be idolatrous.

NAE was founded in the 1940’s to counter the liberal and then influential National Council of Churches, and was historically a conservative bulwark. Its most famous public moment was likely President Ronald Reagan’s 1983 “evil empire” speech to NAE.

No nukes makes no sense.

One of the most dangerous aspects of today's nuclear debate is the deeply skewed ratio of fact versus opinion. Disarmament advocates, many with a poor understanding of nuclear game theory, operational concepts, even basic weapon capabilities, too often posture themselves as experts in a debate that's clearly over their heads.

Key START players could be undercutting national security to achieve President Obama's dream of a nuclear free world

Yesterday Senators Lieberman, Kyl, and McCain delivered a sternly worded letter to General James Jones, urging the president's national security advisor to resist pressure from Moscow to tie conventional missile defense systems into the new START follow-on. The letter came after Ambassador John Beyrle indicated on his U.S. Embassy Moscow blog that, despite claims to the contrary by senior administration officials, missile defense could be included in negotiations to reduce nuclear warheads.

Consider that with this unusual statement by senior arms control wonk Ellen Tauscher, who recently said: "We have to move from a time of mutually assured destruction to a time of mutually assured stability."